Media Madness

By: Kelsey Knutson

A recent Fox News article reported that most of the McCain coverage in this election has been negative.

The report showed that 57% of the media coverage of McCain is negative while only 29% of the media coverage for Obama is negative. Is this right? Or does it actually matter?

Statistics like these lead people to believe that certain media groups are biased one way or another to a candidate. Especially with 24-hour news coverage of the candidates and their campaigns we begin to see opinion and "not so objective" viewpoints coming into news reports. However, you get different bias' with different media outlets and stations.

For example, Fox News is considered "more conservative" where as CNN is considered "more liberal." Does this actually matter?

I say no. I say the media plays a large role in how people view candidates; however, I also feel as those people who actually care enough to watch certain news channels to listen to what is going on in the campaign are also people who know what bias' they are hearing. 

People already think what they think and know what they know. Which channel or station they choose to watch (that has which ever bias it has) just reinforces already existing views.